Among the many post-conviction issues Bob Menendez will ultimately be forced to deal with is the potential forfeiture of his state and federal pensions.
Menendez has been drawing a $1,066-per-month state pension based on his state legislator and local elected official service.
The New Jersey Attorney General’s office is expected to file a civil action against Menendez seeking a lifetime disqualification of public employment. That will likely come with a freezing of his state pension.
Typically, that action doesn’t occur until after sentencing.
Once Menendez leaves the Senate on January 3, 2025 – or earlier – he will lose his federal pension under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. Menendez voted for this law when it came before the Senate. The bill specifically includes bribery, acting as a foreign agent, wire fraud, and conspiracy as reasons to strip a lawmaker of their pension.
Menendez has served in Congress since taking a House seat on January 3, 1993. The most common pension plan would put Menendez’s annual congressional pension at $139,200 annually, the maximum pension available to senators.
At the state level, the highest annual salary was $49,999, a combination of what he was making as a state senator and mayor of Union City when he left the state payroll in 1993 to take his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
He began drawing his state pension in January 2019, after he was re-elected to a third term in the U.S. Senate.
State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Little Silver) reintroduced legislation following Menendez’s indictment last September to automatically take away pensions of pubic officials convicted of corruption.
“I whole heartedly believe corrupt public officials should not receive any benefits from state pensions. If the Legislature refuses to move this bill, as it has for the last sixteen years, it will allow individuals like disgraced Senator Bob Menendez to continue leeching off of New Jersey taxpayers,” said O’Scanlon. “This kind of reform is long overdue and should have been enacted years ago, but failing to act now will be a slap in the face to taxpayers.”